9 comments:

Hi. Sorry for not visiting for a few weeks, especially where we were exchanging emails about a slowdown here. I haven't really been on any other blogs since then; things have been a little hectic.

Anyway, you've probably already heard from others, but when I came to your site just now it rendered in a few seconds, rather than a couple minutes. I noticed you have removed your Labels widget, so it looks like that was what was causing the slowdown. Congrats on the resolution.

Well, if some folks stopped coming because of the slowdown then they would not have returned and found out that you've addressed it. There's an old adage - "a cat that sits on a hot stove lid will never sit on a hot one again...the problem is that it will never sit on a cold one either."

Perhaps an informational post about it would help. The title should be something that would attract former visitors when they see it listed among the "Recent Posts at Other Blogs" widgets on some blogs.

Once former visitors follow the link to this post and discover things are back to normal they may put you back on their visiting rotation again.

What I meant is that I believe at least some of your reduction in hits is not from people who came to your site, but clicked on fewer reviews; I believe it was from people who stopped coming to your site at all because of the former slowness.

You mentioned that despite addressing the issue your hit count had not fully rebounded. That seems to add evidence to the fact that some people simply stopped coming at all.

Since they would need to come back to discover that you have addressed the issue, and since they are no longer coming, there is no way for them to discover the issue is gone.

The solution is to attract their attention on blogs other than your own. Some blogs (i.e. Big Thoughts from a Small Mind) have links in the righthand column to the most recent posts at other blogs. If you create a post with a title something like "I've Addressed the Slowness Issues" then this will appear on these other blogs, former visitors may see them and click on the link to read your post about it. When they do that, they will experience firsthand that your blog comes up in seconds, not minutes. This may then encourage them to add you back to the list of blogs that they regularly visit.